Hi SteemIt! I'm Jake Kobrin, and art is my life.

Hi Steemit,

Wow, firstly I have to say that I am remarkably inspired by this new social media platform. Recently I’ve been speaking with some friends how about how great it would be if there was a social media platform that actually rewarded its content creators with currency. Having recently become more fascinated with bitcoins and other forms of cryptocurrency, this new format is even better than I could even have hoped for. I’m excited to begin posting more content here!

My name is Jake Kobrin and art is my life. I am a painter, a designer, digital artist, and live painter. I’m 24 years old and currently live in Grass Valley, California. I grew up in the beautiful Marin county woodlands of the bay area in a very supportive home. Since I can remember I’ve always been painting, drawing, creating, and expressing. I would love to tell you a bit about my journey.

First off this is me, working on one of my more recently finished paintings. It’s acrylic on canvas and titled Sueño (Hypnagogia.) I’m a self defined psychedelic artist, greatly influenced and fascinated by the phenomenon of consciousness and the many tools we have to explore it.

And here are some of my other paintings:

A little bit about my path…

I was very depressed and isolated when I was a teenager, and faced some rather severe depression in high school. I was extremely overweight, didn’t have anything to relate to with the other students, and felt completely misunderstood. I was fascinated by black and death metal, satanism, and suicide. I felt completely alone and often felt there was no purpose to my existence. The artwork I created during this time reflected the pain and darkness that I was feeling and in many ways saved my life by giving me purpose and an essential outlet for catharsis.

When I was 16 and still in highschool, I went to see an incredibly moving exhibition of Android Jones’ artwork in San Francisco. It was here that I decided that my path in life was to become an artist and I decided to leave high school early to pursue studies at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco where I studied Illustration and Fine Art. Attending Android’s show, and the outlandishly creative and sexy Burning Man community of followers that came to see the art struck me like lightning, and I remember creating in a blaze of fiery inspiration when I returned home. The show felt like home, and I knew that the misunderstood artist that I felt myself to be would someday be united with a supportive family and community of other creative misfits.

^ Android and his art

I was fortunate to be able to take many workshops with Android and to grow to know him personally. I started this digital painting, made in Corel Painter with a Wacom Tablet, during a workshop with him in 2012.

Around that time, thanks to my father, a Buddhist and practicing psychologist, I was introduced to meditation and the fundamental teachings of Buddhism. The practice of meditation, and a little later yoga, completely changed my life and state of being. I started to love myself, little by little, to open my heart and to cast aside the self limiting beliefs I held in high school. This boost in self esteem also had a major impact on my life, and I started eating healthier and exercising. I lost over 100 pounds. This is a digital painting I made around this time of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Influenced by many prominent Buddhist and spiritual teachers such as Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Jack Kornfield, and Aldous Huxley, (and slightly coaxed by Android Jones) during this time I was also inspired to try psychedelic mushrooms, which was a groundbreaking and life changing event. As I laid alone in my bedroom after ingesting the mushrooms, my concept of my self, my Ego, was completely (s)tripped away, leaving bare an essential consciousness that reminded me that who I was truly was pure love. I couldn’t remember my name or even remember that I once had one. All I felt was ecstasy, bliss, and love. I laughed and cried simultaneously for what felt like eternity. It reminded me of an essential purity that I held, that no matter what I had gone through in high school or at any point in my life, the pure joy that I was as a child and the love that I held was still there within me. I can not emphasize how important and positive this event was for me, and I’ve since become an enthusiast of psychedelics and their impact on consciousness, health, art, psychology, and spirituality. I’ve made very many other experiments since that first one at the age of 17, including a 10 day Ayahuasca retreat with the Shipibo people in the Amazon Rainforest in Peru, and I enthusiastically advocate how beneficial, healing, and revelatory the psychedelic experience can be when the passenger is prepared and the conditions are appropriate. Not only did psychedelics change my life on an emotional and spiritual level, but they also completely changed the aesthetic of my artwork.

Naturally, being a lover of art and a spiritually open person, I have always loved Alex Grey. I hopped onto a plane the same year as my first mushroom journey and went on my first ever solo journey to New York, where I took a workshop with Alex and Allyson, who have been an unparalleled force of inspiration in my life and beautiful and supportive friends and mentors. They’re like my visionary art mom and dad.

At his workshop I discovered the wide and active community of visionary artists dreaming and painting to this day. At their suggestion, I also made my first trip to Burning Man in 2012, the first psychedelic/transformational festival I ever attended, which was life changing for many reasons. One of the biggest impacts was seeing the Tribe 13 visionary art gallery at Fractal Nation, which I viewed in deep states of trance, and getting to meet some of these artists including Amanda Sage and Luke Brown. I felt a deep comradeship and familiarity between these artists and myself. I knew that finally I had found the artistic community I had always been looking for.

Burning Man installed a burning dream that I become enthralled by for years after being there. Burning Man and the global community of visionary, psychedelic, and transformational artists and festivals has taken me all over the world, live painting in front of sometimes thousands of people in countries as diverse as Australia, Hungary, and Costa Rica. Some noted festivals I’ve arted at include Boom Festival, Rainbow Serpent, Envision Festival, Lightning in a Bottle, and Shambala.

In 2014 I went to Vienna, Austria to study in the tradition of Ernst Fuchs at the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art. Here I learned the techniques of painting in the tradition of the old Renaissance masters, including an obscure painting technique that combines the use of egg tempera and oil paints. Here are a couple of paintings I made there:

Later I went to Florence, Italy to pursue a strict classical draftsman's training in drawing and painting at the Angel Academy of Art with master Michael John Angel. Here are a couple of drawings I made then.

Since then not only have I traveled all over the world but I’ve pursued many different avenues with my artwork. I continue to make paintings in traditional media and with digital techniques, as well as recently exploring the creation of virtual reality artwork with an HTC Vive. In 2016 I lived in Bali for 5 months and there I created my own line of handcarved jewelry using sacred stones and organic materials such as bone and horn, called Medicine Dragon Designs.

I’m inspired by the idea that art has the power to change us, to inspire us, and to significantly alter our consciousness. The artwork of people such as Alex Grey, Android Jones, and others has had such a profoundly positive impact on my life, literally changing my life, that I can only hope that my artwork has the same impact on the lives of others. I believe that art can be powerful symbols which communicate important and inspiring messages, and can speak in a more universal and enigmatic way than verbal language, much like music. Art can inspire feelings of love, fear, reverence, or a multitude of other emotions and can influence profound changes and actions in the world. Art saved my life. Art makes my life worth living. I love art and I am so happy that I have been able to build a life around it.

Currently I’m working hard to establish new forms of distribution for my artwork. If you feel inspired to support me, I have an online store set up where you can purchase prints and more with my artwork on it here: http://kobrinart.myshopify.com/ My portfolio is on display at http://www.kobrinart.com/ I have a facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/jkobrinart/ and an instagram by the same handle. Currently I’m working on setting up a Patreon campaign which I will update you about as soon as it’s ready. I’m also excited to begin to post more content here in the near future.

Thanks for reading!

Much love,
Jake

P.s. I have more items online for sale at http://jkobrinart.bigcartel.com/ but I’m working on transitioning over to the Shopify format.